Some global law firms sometimes try to smear individuals on behalf of their corporate clients. “Laptop Guy” scam is a smear attack apparently targeting me. Luckily, I was alerted before it started that an international law firm had been tasked to try to coordinate a smear attack on me. Before I proceed, I should highlight that I have not seen the smear attack - other than what I was told. This response is limited but I responded assuming I was the target since I recognized at least one entity which gave a name used and started harassing me with it.

The name “Laptop Guy” was given to me by people who said they work for KLM Dutch Airlines. This was last year during the Covid Pandemic lockdown and I happened to be at the same hotel with them. They harassed me, made racially insensitive comments, wrote detailed descriptions of what I looked like, took pictures of me, asked hotel cleaners and waiters my name and even came to my hotel room door on three different days uninvited to harass me and so forth. I complained to the hotel at the time but the hotel managers assured me they were harmless and persuaded me not to escalate the situation. But they managed to stalk me more in other cities. I told the hotel managers again this year to tell the KLM employees I was aware of their continued stalking and asked them to stop. Within 72 hours after I complained for the second time, some entity assigned some men to start following me. The majority of the airline group was not involved but it seems some of those who were not there were tolerating their friends who started the harassment and the issue started getting out of hand that way. Most were not involved in this but they would still call me Laptop-guy.

How the smear attack is implemented:

If you are a target, you are ideally not supposed to know the source of the attack, since you can’t respond if you don’t know who is attacking you. And apparently, they partly involve law firms to coordinate the smear in underhanded ways. They create a fake situation, sometimes even make it funny, include at least most of your details there except your name - send it surreptitiously to places as restaurants, hotels, your apartment residence, office, etc. especially the ones you may likely visit all while pretending not to know you. In some cases, they even request updates from those areas.

This is one of the classical mental manipulations. So, in this case, by not putting the name on the smear target, people may not focus on whether the lies make sense and the sender may seem impartial. And by making the lies sometimes funny, they also try to distract the recipient of the smear information from the evil intent. Occasionally, they may combine lies meant to harm with general information. They also keep updating your private life - what you wear and even recruit harassment ambassadors.

Then they keep following you while trying to implement their strategy. In my case, they started following me in a foreign country and they are following me now in the United States. They have resources to follow you in real-time. They can get things such as Uber rides, hotel stays or flight bookings even though this type of information is supposedly private. Such an operation doesn’t come cheap even for corporations and it’s very expensive in time. Here in the U.S., they have involved minorities as well to follow me at least recently.

And there is a bonus - if you live in a neighborhood which is majority white, they may emphasize that you wear a mask while highlighting the proxies for your race - perhaps to scare your white neighbors.

If you are not born in the country where you are, that’s another bonus for them. They emphasize that in the smear attack perhaps to rile up those who may have xenophobic instincts among the recipients of the smear. In a foreign country where this started, foreigners are targets for killings and if they are lucky, they just get robbed.

As the restaurants or hotel entities receive that smear information, they will likely not tell you. In fact, those who are unsuspecting or don’t know you personally, may actually unintentionally even spread the lies a little more. Thus, they try to manufacture partners in the smear game by trying to make people who know you think there might a weird side to you. They follow you to the restaurants as well then try to smear you after you leave. They hope some people might believe it if you don’t tell them like I am telling you now.

Then they try to get more people talking about the story. They actually try to hire people to promote the scam - and roam around where you may be found. Remember, they are hoping to normalize the lies. That’s why they spread it secretly. And more shameless, they try to add people who look like you to join the smear attack.

And in this case, they could hope that I get distracted and focus on this rather than the harassment, stalking, endangerment of my privacy and security from their KLM airlines friends mentioned earlier.